Race and Ethnicity (Chappy 8) Flashcards
What is ambiguous about race and ethnicty?
How they are defined, understood and expressed as identity are not essential, unchanging terms
What forms the basis for societal definitions of race and ethnicity? are race/ethnicity, race/racism all the same concepts?
what are racial categories contingent upon?
Bases of social inequalities, social relations in a society - how they are structured between groups and between individuals and institutions
Race and ethnicity, race and racism are not the same but they are intimately connected
Racial categories as historically and culturally contingent
What did Edward Bruner (1996) study in terms of racial recognition? what idea did this reveal?
Tourism in Ghana (1996) - african americans who visited Ghana were considered “white” by local Ghanaians (race as a class and status)
Mass Prac Q:
What about race has made it imperative for Stats Canada to change their method of classification?
Explain Bitch
Explain race as a social construct, is a bio definition reliable?
Race is not biologically meaningful - race is the product of sociohistorical - not scientific - processes
Human “racial” pops are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups
What are the dangers of viewing race as purely biological? Why are the politics of race and racism important?
What did Noam Chomsky have to say about race?
People/organizations may use race as if it reflects biological differences- arbitrary biological traits used to delineate “races” can be conceptualized as racialized expressions of biology
Politics of race and racism are important - identification and recognition of contemporary and historical injustices and inequalities
Noam Chomsky - correlations between race and INSERT only has weight in a racist society
What is racialization in terms of the attribution process?
What change did the OHRC make in language to accomodate updated ideas about race?
Racialization, attribution process: “The process by which societies construct races as real, different and unequal in ways that matter to economic, political and social life”
OHRC uses term “racialized persons” or “racialized group” instead of the more outdated and inaccurate terms “racial minority” etc
What is racialization? this process is based on what essential method of understanding identity?
The process by which people are viewed and judged as essentially different in terms of their intellect, morality, values, because of differences of outward physical appearance
Gender and essentialism, race as an essentialism
Define a minority? a visual minority? - what are the criticisms around this categorization?
Define a majority?
Minority: A group which is disadvantaged (economically, politically) and subject to unequal or unfair treatment
Visible Minority - employment equity act: non-caucasian in race or non-white in colour
(ex: chinese, south asian, black, filipino etc)
Too broad a category - some visible minority groups e.g Japanese-Canadians earn (av) the same as Canadians w/ french and british ancestry
Should white-caucasian be the standard against which visibility is judged
CJS use of visible minority category can hide stats on race-specific issues (over-rep, discrim etc)
Majority: a group which is advantaged, greater resources - majority does not mean numerical majority
What stat regarding gender and racial differences shows a differences between black males and females?
Black males 10x more likely to be stopped in Toronto by police as black females (Carding)
What are the different levels and types of racism?
Interpersonal (prejudice), social and institutional
Define racism
Assumptions and judgements in the abilities, motives, and intents of an individual on the basis of their race
Give three examples of social level racism?
Racist / stereotypical representations on TV
Face recognition technology on smartphones / apps
Halloween costumes
Give three examples of institutionalized or systematic racism?
Policies, practices, government-based programs
Part of the structure of society
Ex: employment, housing, education, welfare, health care, CJS
What is racial profiling? What are the problems with its use?
Provide an example from a York (2016) study?
Hint: don’t need to provide all the stats just the general results
Actions undertaken supposedly for reasons of safety, security or public protection, based on racial stereotypes, rather than on reasonable suspicion
Singled out for extra surveillance, scrutiny, disproportionately harsh treatment.
Racial profiling relates to issues of safety and security - but also more than policing
York uni study (foster and jacobs 2016) - TSRDCP - OPSB
Middle eastern and black - higher incidents of traffic stops by police
M.E 3.3 times more - less than 4% of pop in Ottawa but 12.3% of the total stops
M.E men 12x more likely to be stopped by police
B 2.3 times more - less than 4% of pop in Ottawa but 8.8% of the total stops
B men 8x more likely to be stopped by police
